Children all grow up to be sinners
by Lynyrd Lionheart
Summary: They had sent her with Rebekah to be safe, or so they claimed. But Hope grew up as something worse than an orphan - she grew up a child with parents she knew didn't want her. Dark!Hope.


**AN: Inspired by a post on Tumblr from ravenclawslibrary that talked about how, if Hope had to be a part of **_**The Originals**_**, then they wanted her to end up being just as twisted and messed up as the rest of the Mikaelsons. So I wrote it.**

**Children all grow up to be sinners**

Rebekah cannot find the exact point where she screwed up.

She looked back time and again, searching for that moment, that shining, defining point in time, where she can say _yes, that's where it happened_, but she cannot find it. Perhaps she over-indulged Hope just a little too much, but there is a difference between spoiled and what it is her niece has become.

Rebekah doesn't like the word monster. It is thrown about far too often, particularly in regards to her family… but try as she might, she cannot find another name for Hope.

It's not even in the overt ways of her brothers. Kol and Klaus had always enjoyed blood and mayhem, and Rebekah could perhaps understand it if Hope did the same. They say blood will tell, and murder is written in the Mikaelson blood… but she doesn't murder simply for fun. Hope turns her nose up at such mundane tasks, far more likely to compel a man to kill himself when he's outlived his purpose, rather than do the deed herself and sully her nails.

Except for those rare moments, when every now and then… every now and then she would _rage_. And that's when Rebekah would see it.

Niklaus in Hope's bright blue eyes, angry at the world and ready to burn it to ash if it didn't give her what she wanted. It would happen over the smallest of things – a classmate whose prom dress was a little too similar to hers, a boy who preferred another over Hope's chocolate locks and charming smile, a waitress who didn't give her the respect she felt was her birth right. In those moments, she didn't care about her nails or that overt murder was beneath her. She would tear and rage and kill anyone that got in her way.

Bodies left behind to rot, because Hope had thrown another temper tantrum. Rebekah should be used to the sight, yet it had her closing her eyes, as though she could block out the truth of what her niece had become despite her best efforts.

"Don't frown like that, Aunt Beks. You'll get wrinkles," Hope said, licking blood off of her thumb and looking bored. Her mission had been a success, the annoyance had been removed, and she had already moved on, ready for the next entertainment. "I hope you're not upset because of your pathetic crush on the man. We'll find you another boy to moon over, if it's so very important to you."

And this was where Hope's true monstrosity would come out. Because as horrible as her rages were, it was when the rage had faded and she was left cold-blooded and clear-headed that she would make those remarks. Small and seemingly insignificant, but full of vitriol and aimed right at the heart of its target. Hope knew people better than anyone else, and Rebekah wondered if she had gotten that ability from her mother.

The Gods knew she hadn't gotten it from her Mikaelson blood.

"This needs to stop, Hope," Rebekah said, her voice soft and pleading and _weak_, but she can't help it. She wanted to help her niece, to show her a path different from the one she and her siblings had walked down.

Instead, Hope forged her own path and came out the other side her very own form of monster.

"Oh, Aunt Beks… this will _never_ stop."

HOPE

Hope had never been to New Orleans before, not outside the few hours she spent there after her birth. She knew her parents still lived there, supposedly making it safe for her eventual return.

Hope scoffed at that. Her aunt could tell her as many pathetic fairytales as she wanted about how the _king_ simply wanted to make the city safe for his _princess_, but Hope could read between the lines perfectly fine. Her father was a power mad tyrant who cared more for the false loyalty of the city than he did his own flesh and blood, and her mother was a pathetic whelp who mooned after her Uncle Elijah and longed for the respect of a wolf pack that wanted nothing to do with her after she had become a Hybrid.

They were both selfish, and Hope was left behind to survive with dear Aunt Beks. And Hope did love Rebekah, in her own way. She had very little respect for her, of course. Her boy made aunt who was so desperate for acceptance that she would accept any abuse heaped upon her as long as the one heaping it acted as though they cared. But she loved her, felt protective of her, and that simply made her hate her parents more.

They pawned her onto Rebekah to raise while they ran wild in their city and gave her nary a thought outside of cheap Hallmark birthday cards and the extravagant gifts that came with them. Hope had learned long ago that love was cheap, and those gifts were simply proof of that.

But Aunt Beks had finally given up, at least for the moment, and Hope had escaped. Left Europe for the one place she wanted to be – New Orleans. Exactly sixteen years after the day of her first departure, Hope figured it was time for a family reunion.

The first thing she noticed was that the city smelled. It wasn't at all the glamorous, old time wonderland of her aunt's stories. It was bustling, and too loud and it _smelled_. Hope sneered at it, not understanding the appeal. Why would anyone want to rule this city when there were dozens more that were far superior?

The second thing she noticed was the witch presence.

Magic flowed through her veins, magic of a witch, of a werewolf, of a vampire. There was so much magic within her, that sometimes Hope didn't know where the magic began and she ended, or if there was even a difference. And this city was full of its own magic that sang to the magic that made up so much of Hope.

She felt powerful here, more powerful than she had felt anywhere else, and suddenly the family obsession with the city made far more sense.

"You, girl, what are you doing just standing her-" Hope whirled toward the voice, and the woman speaking, a dark skinned woman in her late fifties at least, broke off, eyes widening when she got her first real look at her. "Impossible. You're dead."

"Obviously not," Hope replied softly, her sweetest smile quirking her lips, showing off the dimples that had gotten her out of more trouble than any girl should get into. "But you are."

The magic in the air condensed around Hope, and she let it flair out, snapping the woman's – she was a witch, Hope was positive of that – neck like a twig. She fell to the ground and people around Hope began to scream, someone called for 9-1-1 to be called, and Hope just watched the mayhem, pleased at how easy it had been to start.

When the police arrived, she was already long gone from the scene.

HOPE

It had been put down to a freak accident. Humans would see what they wanted to see, and the humans that had seen the witch's death widely agreed that she must have fallen and landed in just the right way to break her neck. That's what the official report read.

The unofficial report said that the witch had been murdered by another witch, and now the magical community was up in arms and Klaus was ready to kill whatever foolish little spell caster had decided to dare disrupt the tenuous peace his kingdom had finally achieved.

"What's another dead witch?" Hayley asked, a proponent of hunting down whoever it had been and killing them. Sixteen years, and she was no more over her foolish vendetta against the witches than when she had first been turned and Hope sent to Rebekah. Klaus knew better, of course. When used correctly, witches were incredibly useful.

But on this rare occasion, he found himself agreeing with Hayley. The peace was fragile, and while Klaus did not balk at confrontation, he disliked being forced into it by upstarts.

"Another dead witch matters when they wish to deal with their own their own way," Elijah replied in that ever patient way of his, running his hand over Hayley's shoulder. It seemed to soothe her, though Klaus internally scoffed. It was no wonder Hayley was as horrid at being a Hybrid now as she had been sixteen years ago, with the way Elijah coddled her so. She had never had to learn to survive as they had, and it left her weak.

"They forced us to give up our daughter, do you think that I care what they _wish_?" Hayley hissed out, and Elijah sighed while Klaus bit back a smirk.

"Playing the part of loving mother?" a low voice drawled out, accented, though Klaus couldn't quite place what part of Europe the accent came from. "A little redundant, considering that you've never met the child you claim to love."

She was little more than a child, the lovely girl with the bright blue eyes and waving chocolate brown hair. Her smile was brilliant, revealing dimples in her cheeks, but her eyes were cold as she looked at them, cold and calculating in ways Klaus had only ever seen eyes look in the mirror.

"Then again, I suppose the pony was meant to be proof of your love, wasn't it, mother?" The girl held an iphone in her hands, was scrolling through it as she spoke. "I named it Buttercup and then I killed it because a horse was a stupid gift to give a girl who would never have a true home at which to keep it. But I suppose it's to be expected. No one will ever say I got my brains from a pack of hillbilly werewolves who pledged loyalty to the first master that came their way in peace."

"Hope?" Hayley breathed out, and her voice was equal parts horrified and hopeful. Hopeful because this was a moment Hayley had only ever dreamed of, getting to meet her daughter, to see the young woman she would be. Horrified because the girl scrolling through her phone speaking so candidly of killing a pet was not at all what Hayley had wished her to be. Hope was meant to be just that – their hope, their redemption. The proof that at least one good thing had come from Hayley Marshall.

"Disappointed, mother?" Hope drawled out, finally putting the phone away in the jacket of her brown leather coat. "Not the angel you expected your little girl to become? It's not like I had much of a chance, genetically speaking – daughter of a vicious psycho and my uncle's whore."

Hayley recoiled at the harsh words, and Hope smirked. No longer were her eyes so cold, now there was a gleeful light to them. She enjoyed it, watching her words slash through her mother's heart.

"Hope," Elijah said, stepping forward, ever the peacemaker. "Your mother has fought for you. Your father as well. They wanted you to have a ho-"

"They wanted to hold power of this city and its citizen," Hope snapped, her words cutting Elijah off and slashing through the room. "They pawned me off on Aunt Beks because it was easy. Because they could convince themselves they were doing the right thing while still pursuing their own selfish needs. So I lived without them while my mother spread her legs for you and slashed witches throats in my name, nevermind that _I wasn't dead_. She could have been with me, nothing held her in this city. Nothing but you and her selfishness. So don't tell me that she fought for me. My mother has never fought for a single thing in her life but herself."

The words may have been spoken to Elijah, but Hope met Hayley's eyes the entire time she spoke.

"My father… yes, of course he fought for me. The brave king of New Orleans, who merely wanted the city to be safe for his beloved daughter. I got you a gift, daddy." The phone was out once more, this time held out towards Klaus, but he didn't have to take it to see the picture it held.

Pretty, lovely Camille. Camille whom he had drained of vervain and compelled away to a happy life, sending away a weakness he could ill afford. Only she wasn't so pretty as she hung from the rafters of a church, blue eyes wide and empty and chilling to behold.

"Pity she didn't remember anything," Hope said, smiling once more. "Perhaps then she wouldn't have been so easy to compel. I thought about bringing you her head, but body parts are so difficult to get through customs."

"You're insane," Klaus said softly, and he could see it in Hope's eyes. Insanity was there, as he had once seen in Mikael's eyes and Esther's, even Kol's when they had dug into a cause they believed could save the world.

In the case of Mikael and Esther, that cause had been their children's death.

"I'm exactly what you made me, father. Daddy's little monster, aren't you proud?"

"Where is Rebekah, Hope?" Klaus asked, and Hope shrugged, pulling her phone away so he could no longer see the picture of Camille and her final end.

"In Europe somewhere. Perhaps she's already found a replacement lover for the one I killed. He was my chemistry teacher, you see. Gave me a God awful mark and I disliked it. Aunt Beks would say I threw a tantrum, but I view it as eliminating an obstacle. You know what that's about, don't you, father? If someone is in your way, kill them. Isn't that the family motto?"

"She was supposed to raise you away from this," Hayley whispered, curling her body into Elijah's. "You were supposed to have the chance we never did. You were sup-"

"I really don't care about what I was _supposed_ to do, mother. And that you keep harping on about it is pathetic. You weren't there to see that I got that better chance. So I made my own path, and now I'm here for my birth right."

"The city?" Elijah asked, tightening his grip on Hayley ever so slightly, as though to keep her safe from the sight of her daughter gone so very wrong. "Revealing who you are, it will get you killed, Hope."

"Oh, I'm aware of that," Hope waved her hand, as though Elijah's words were a foolishness far beneath her. And to her, they probably were. "To be honest, I always thought this city was waste of time. Until I got here, then I understood. It has so much _power_. And someday, that power will be mine. But you're right, darling uncle, I'm not at all prepared for that. No, I'm here for Grandmother's grimoire. And I will rain blood and agony down on this city and everyone in it until you hand it over to me."

"We don't have it," Klaus replied, and he hated that he answered so quickly. This was _his_ daughter, she should fear and respect _him_, but instead she looked down her nose at him as though he were beneath her.

"Then find it, _daddy_." She looked at the calendar on the wall, the calendar where her name was written in pink ink within a heart. Hayley's way of memorializing her birthday. Hope walked up to it, ran her finger around the writing, and for a second Klaus thought that perhaps she wasn't as far gone as he feared, that there was a part of her that wanted to be their daughter, to be loved by them.

Then the heart began to burn, and the calendar was reduced to ash beneath Hope's fingers.

"It's my birthday, daddy," she said with a bright smile and she turned back, as though she hadn't just lit the calendar on fire out of what could only be rage. "And all I want this year is that grimoire."

HOPE

Rebekah had followed her after all, not that Hope was truly surprised. It was quicker than expected, but she'd known her aunt wouldn't be able to keep her back turned for long. She found her awaiting her arrival in the suite she had booked using Rebekah's Amex.

"You'll get yourself killed here, Hope. We have to leave."

"Hello Aunt Beks. Why yes, it is my birthday. You're letting me have that green scarf you got in Venice? Oh, you're so lovely!"

"Leave with me now and you can have my whole bloody wardrobe!"

Hope let herself fall into a chair, her legs resting over the armrest, and leaned her head back, letting her hair tumble towards the floor.

"What do you fear, Aunt Beks? That the witches will kill me? Or that my father will?" Hope watched her aunt with a curious gaze, trying to peg her motives. "Or perhaps you fear for yourself. But no, if that were the case you wouldn't have come here. You'd know that you would be too late, that I wouldn't leave off finally meeting the family you've told me so much about. They leave something to be desired."

"My brother breaks the things he claims to love, Hope," Rebekah said, kneeling next to her. "And despite what you might think, he _does_ love you, as much as Niklaus can love. I don't want you to be another broken thing of his."

"You're projecting, Aunt Beks."

"No, I simply _know_, Hope."

Hope tapped her fingers on the back of the chair and shook her head lightly.

"You forget a very crucial fact, Aunt Rebekah. My father could break you because you let him. You loved him for a thousand years. He holds no such power over me. I have spent the last sixteen years hating him. If anyone will be broken, it will be him."

"Perhaps I don't want that either."

"Perhaps you don't get a choice," Hope turned her eyes away from her aunt, directed them at the mural painted on the roof. It was ugly, but then Hope thought most paintings were ugly. She had never understood the appeal of what others called _fine art_. Give her photographs and Katy Perry over DaVinci and Beethoven any day. "If you want me to leave, then convince your siblings to give me your mother's grimoire."

"Mother's grimoire. What on Earth do you want with that?" Rebekah demanded, confusion written across her face.

"My legacy," Hope replied succinctly.

HOPE

She killed five witches, as much because they were getting close to finding her as to send a message to her family, but she'll let them believe it's the latter that drove her more. It had been a full week since her arrival, and she was no closer to having the grimoire.

What she had been forced to endure were heartfelt one-on-ones with both her mother and Uncle Elijah. They went much the same:

Elijah/Hayley: we love you and only wanted what's best for you

Hope: what's best for me in the grimoire

Elijah/Hayley: that won't keep you safe, it will only put you in more danger. Lots of witches want that grimoire.

Hope: I'm the only one who is related to Esther by blood.

Elijah/Hayley: Just talk to us! We can be a family.

Hope:…

Elijah/Hayley: We want to get to know you, the woman you've become.

Hope:…

Elijah/Hayley: Will you give us a chance?

Hope: Pardon? I spaced out after the word talk. I beat my Candy Crush high score, though, so I suppose I should thank you.

It was the same thing over and over. They'd try to talk her down, as though they had any clue who she was, which buttons to press to make her listen. In sixteen years, even _Rebekah_, hadn't figured that out. But Hope? Hope knew what made people tick, and she had spent her whole life making a study of her family for this very moment.

"Does it ever get tiresome?" she asked Elijah one day, mixing up the usual conversation. Elijah lit up, as though this change meant he was making progress with her.

"Does what ever get tiresome?" he asked.

"This whole white knight thing you do. Where you act as though you're noble and good when you're just as bad as the rest, and then try to save them, even though in a thousand years you've never saved yourself." Hope sat up from her usual reclined position in her chair and leaned toward him. "I'm not my mother, uncle. I won't be charmed by your attempts to save me. If you wanted that, you should have sent my mother with me sixteen years ago. Instead I was raised without parents by a woman who wouldn't know good morals if they hit her in the face. Aunt Beks tried, and she failed. You will be no more successful. Get me the grimoire, or I'll go on another witch hunt."

HOPE

By the time a month had passed, there was a full out man hunt for Hope, and they were no closer to getting through to her.

"Give her the book, Nik," Rebekah said desperately. "She won't stop this, and the fact that she's gone a month keeping her temper? She will throw a tantrum, and I don't know that this city can survive one of those."

"And whose fault is that?" Hayley demanded, turning on the blonde angrily.

"Hayley-" Elijah began in a warning tone, but Hayley cut him off heedlessly.

"No, Elijah. She needs to hear this. How could you let this happen, Rebekah? We trusted you with her! We trusted you to raise her well!"

"I shouldn't have had to raise her!" Rebekah screamed back. "_You_ were her mother, yet you stayed here… why? So you could screw my brother? I did the best I could, but my best was no replacement for the parents that willingly abandoned her."

"It wasn't willing! The witches made us-"

"The witches made you fake her death, but no one forced you to _stay_. So bugger to the lot of you! Give her the grimoire, or she'll paint this town red. I'm through stalling for you."

"Don't you dare walk-"

Hayley cut off with a gurgle, looking down in shock. An arm was plunged into her chest, gripping her heart tight, squeezing enough to make sure that its owner had Hayley's attention.

"_Never_," Hope hissed. "_Never_ talk to Aunt Beks like that again. She is the only one of all of you that ever cared, and you're just the woman that let me borrow her womb for nine months. _Never_ forget that, Hayley. You aren't my mother. _She _is."

Then Hope released her heart and retracted her hand, and Hayley fell to her knees, no longer held up by her daughter.

"Aunt Beks is right, however. I grow impatient. I want the grimoire. Now."

"And if I choose not to give such a powerful book of spells to a girl that is little more than a spoiled brat?" Klaus asked, tapping his fingers on the wood of the fireplace.

"You don't want to find out, father," Hope replied, and matching blue eyes clashed along the length of the room. "I know you have it. The witches are full of the news that you managed to get it back from them. Give it to me, and you never have to face your failure again."

"You're right," Klaus agreed, setting his glass on the fireplace. "Fine then, come along."

"Niklaus," Elijah hissed from his spot next to Hayley, because of course he had to coddle her after she was hurt by her mean little daughter.

"No, Elijah. She's right. We'll end this. I dislike seeing my failure in her face day in and day out."

Hope simply smiled, a smile to mask the pain of his words. _I'm just like you!_ Her thoughts screamed, just daddy's little monster, and how _dare_ he pass judgement on her when he had spent his life doing so much worse?

But it didn't matter. He was her sperm donor, not a real parent. His opinion didn't matter.

What mattered was the grimoire on his desk and what it could teach her, about magic, about her heritage. About –

She spun around, throwing her father back with her power as he moved to rip her head off of her neck.

"Killing me, father? Was that really your plan?" Hope asked, holding him there, and she wondered if he appreciated the irony of this moment as she did. She knew the story, of how the witches had held him like this through her mother's labour, how he had watched helplessly as she'd been born and kidnapped.

And now he would be held there once more, to watch helplessly as his daughter walked away with the tool to make her the most powerful being alive.

"Isn't that your plan?" Klaus croaked out. "To use the magicks in that book to ultimately kill me?"

"Oh no, father," Hope replied with an easy laugh. "How little you know me! I have no desire to see you _dead_" – she took a slow step toward where he hung against the wall – "death is easy. Death is an end. No, I want you on your knees before me, helpless and broken, just like I was helpless and broken when I realized there would be no happily ever after for me. That I was worse off than an orphan, because I had parents, but they simply didn't want me. "

Klaus swallowed at his words, and Hope gave a chuckle completely devoid of humor, because she had hit him at his heart with her words, and hadn't even meant to.

"Turn, turn, turn, _daddy_," she hissed out, picking up the grimoire. "It all comes back on itself. Mikael never loved you, so you believed yourself unloveable. In turn, you made yourself incapable of love. And now there's me, and I'm incapable as well. Incapable and unloveable. But if I can't make you love me, I _will_ make you fear me."

"I will find you," Klaus said. "I will scour the Earth and I will fi-"

"Like you found Katerina Pierce and Tyler Lockwood?" Hope cut him off with a derisive wave of her hand. "Please. You couldn't find one out of control baby vampire for five hundred years, and I will have Aunt Beks on my side."

"Will you?" Klaus demanded, his words meant to inspire doubt, but Hope merely smiled.

"I will, father. Because despite your best efforts, aunt _is_ still capable of love. And she loves me far too much to let you kill me." She patted him on the foot, the easiest part to reach. "Checkmate, father. I win. Aren't you proud of the monster you created?"

And then she was gone.

**AN: And there it is. Don't ask me what Hope is in this story. Witch with a side of all that other stuff, because I'm not sure what she's supposed to be on the show and magic (that's the go-to reasoning, right?). **

**After writing **_**All my friend say**_**, I had to return to the dark stuff. So this is what you get for today. Let me know what you think.**


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